Ohio waiting on NCLB waiver

As expected, the Ohio Department of Education notified the U.S. Department of Education last
week that it plans to seek waivers to No Child Left Behind.

But it doesn't plan to submit its request until February. Several states already have applied
and their waiver requests will either be granted or denied by the federal department in December.
States that wait until February will hear back from the federal education department in the spring.
Top state education officials traveled to Washington, D.C., a few weeks ago to hear about the
waiver options.

Patrick Gallaway, spokesman for the state Education Department, said officials haven't decided
yet which portions of the law they hope to bypass.

"We want to hear from stakeholders what they would like to see and how they feel the
waiver will help increase student achievement. The discussions will be ongoing and will address the portions of NCLB
that are most critical to student success," he said in an email.

States can apply to scrap a keystone of No Child Left Behind, the requirement
that all students become proficient in math and reading by 2014. Rules that require money for poor
students in underperforming schools to be spent on tutoring or transfers to better schools also can
be scrapped. In fact, the idea that a school could be labeled as failing if even a small segment of
its student population isn’t improving quickly enough can be wiped away by using the waiver
process.

Some school districts (including
Springfield
City ) have pleaded with ODE to seek waivers quickly. Others, including civil-rights
activists, worry that eliminating portions of the law cause schools to overlook the importance of
highlighting and closing the achievement gap between groups of students.